Plex Podcast review: 3 months of usage

Online Media Sources
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I loved being able to listen to a podcast on all of my devices, and they even remembered where I left off. No other podcast app allows such a seamless transition between devices, or supports so many. If Plex were simply a bad podcast app, that feature alone would make me stick with it. But it’s not bad, it’s broken.

The UI
When I open a podcast app, I want to see a list of newly downloaded episodes. Almost all podcast apps put these front & center. Plex does not.

Plex puts “on deck” front & center, a bunch of old episodes from months ago that have a few minutes of playtime left. It also gives substantial real estate to “recommended” - a bunch of podcasts I have no interest in. To actually see a list of newly downloaded episodes, here’s the order of operations:

Plex -> Podcasts -> My Podcasts -> Shows (dropdown to “Episodes”) -> Sort (change from title to “Release Date”

None of those settings are saved, so all 7 clicks have to be done every time to see a list of newly downlaoded episodes. It’s an absolute pain.

Listening while Driving
Attempting to drive and listen to a podcast on Plex is frustrating for two reasons

  1. A crash in android that has existed for nearly 9 months now, which happens about 45 minutes into a show.
  2. The podcast on Android isn’t paused when a Maps app gives directions, instead the volume is lowered. That makes sense for music, but for podcasts you actually need to hear the words.

Random weird bugs
These were the last straw for me, from the odd crashes, to episodes being skipped, and now the inability to stream to Chromecast.

Conclusion
I do not recommend using Plex for podcasts.

4 Likes
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You sum up my experiences as well on Android. Many bugs still present, like episodes restarting from the beginning when started from one button, but continues from where paused when started from other buttons.

I would really like to continue using plex for my podcasts just for the sync across devices and online managing. What is currently stopping me from going back to DoggCatcher is the manual work in marking which episodes I have played in plex the last year.

I would really prefer some proper bug fixes and GUI adjustments in plex.

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I used it for about 4 months but couldn’t put up with all the bugs and crashing. I provided tons of logs, but they were unable to even see the crash. I provided videos of bugs, and eagerly installed updated with any changes related to podcasts or the player. It was buggy on my old iPhone, and crashed constantly on my Pixel 2 XL.

Movies and shows work great, but podcasts are unusable.

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It’s also broken for me on iOS:

  • I’m missing a feature to mute show, sometimes I’d like to be subscribed to a show without being notified about every new episode.
  • I’m missing something to control what’s on the Deck (add / remove from Deck)
  • I’d like to be able to hide played episodes from Podacast views.
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